Study Confirms Smartphones Now #1 Screen, Beating TV

A report released this week by Millward Brown takes a quantitative and qualitative look at multiscreen activity from a number of perspectives. The report is based on a global survey (n=12,000 respondents, 30 countries). The US sample was 444 people, with some behavioral monitoring and interviews.

I’m going to discuss just a few of the findings. However, there’s a great deal of interesting material in the report, which is free.

While this has been asserted by others in the past, Millward Brown confirmed that in the US daily smartphone screen time has now surpassed TV. That’s also true worldwide. If one combines smartphone and tablet screen time the total exceeds TV by nearly an hour per day.

The US portion of the study also found that 41 percent of the TV audience was simultaneously using a mobile device (tablet, smartphone). For that multiscreening audience, 70 percent are looking and “unrelated content” (called “stacking” in the report). The other 30 percent are exploring related content or taking some action tied to the content or advertising on TV (“meshing”).

Reasons For “Meshing” (Interacting Re TV Show/Ad Content)

Reasons For “Stacking” (Looking At Unrelated Content)

TV advertising still captured the most attention and favorable attitudes compared with other screens, according to the study. Digital screens were otherwise comparable to one another.

Finally there remains a huge gap between time spent and ad spend. TV has more than its share (for time spent) of the ad spend whereas there’s a massive gap between mobile time and ad spend: a combined 44 percent of time vs. 11 percent of spend.

That’s probably about to change dramatically. Mobile ad spending is expected to grow significantly on a global basis and in the US according to the latest forecast from eMarketer.

About The Author

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog, Screenwerk, about connecting the dots between digital media and real-world consumer behavior. He is also VP of Strategy and Insights for the Local Search Association. Follow him on Twitter or find him at Google+.